Month

March 2015

Something new comes from Italy. Under the name “Movimento Roosevelt“, new ideas are circulating to contrast and fight the obscurantist mood that is running contemporary economy, leading it towards a re-distribution of richness which is producing a new aristocracy reigning over the multitude, destroying the middle class and the liberal liberties, using propaganda to make us believe to be free while they are dismantling our rights, our economic possibilities, our future.

Movimento Roosevelt reads the last 40 years society’s involution as something that is not just the casual evolution of the economy but, instead, it is the chosen direction given by the conservative élites who decide to change the economic model, attacking the citizen’s rights that European and American people had after second world war, building the model of the inclusive and democratic great society that is the Welfare State.

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The whole contemporary history is marked by the difference between the emancipationist side of liberal thought – with its attention for rights of speech, religion, and freedom from needs and from fear (something which started with the 1688’s “Glorious Revolution” driven by Oliver Cromwell, evolving as the vision of a social capitalism through the Fabian Society and in past century into the excellent synthesis of the Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”) – and the conservative one, reactionary and obscurantist (which can be identified with the Jacobite reactionary risings, and with their inheritors which were the so-called “Ancient and Traditionalist” forces and, in past century and until now, the strategist of the neo-conservative with the pseudo-liberal financial monetarism, which are the best allied of the military–industrial complex (a definition you may find on Encyclopedia Britannica) industrial-military complex).

From this perspective, the Italian section Movimento Roosevelt take position to fight against the austerity policies being these not something we need for, but something which, under the propaganda of modernization and reduction of public debt, it has been created with the concrete purpose to dismantle the citizen’s rights, in name of a different redistribution of richness for the exclusive advantage of few elitist rings.

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Concerning SOCIETAS MAZZINI, we are extremely close to the Movimento Roosevelt‘s lecture of the recent history, therefore we are absolutely proud to had part in the inaugural conference in Perugia (March 21, 2015) finding the way to cooperate with the same spirit of Giuseppe Mazzini in the process of lighting fires throughout Italy and the whole Europe (including our existing basis), with the aim to contrast the neo-conservative monetarist attack to citizen’s right.

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As we affirm with the essay “The rising of cosmopolitan personalities“, it was the industrial revolution that generated the promise that machines would have set free people from hard work leading them towards material, psychological and spiritual progress. From this promise, emancipation’s movements risen, but their way was barred by two tremendous wars. The horror generated by these terrible experiences leaded the international community to give space to those political positions which triumphed with the 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), being the political vision of Roosevelt’s New Deal, as economically founded according the model of the Keynesian multiplier through public spending and concretely applied with the Marshall plan for the European post-war recovery.

This model generated increasing richness and growing industrial production for the whole time of the “Glorious Thirty“, the 30 years from 1945 to 1975, when the New Deal’s policies were applied in the entire Western world and the Keynesian economy really generated a multiplied effect of the money employed with the Marshall plan.

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Together with the progressive consolidation of the system of rights and insurance for citizens called Welfare State, the economic growth allowed to generate a new fight for people who claimed for more rights with new ideas and attitudes coming from new music and literature that we call “the Beat“, and we took inspiration from the “active restrospective” which can be gained through by the work of important sources in the actual panorama of literary and sociological studies emerging from some circles like the European Beat Studies Network.

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Here you will get the connective link with the European Beat Studies Network, which was born into the sphere of the Roosevelt Study Center, as a sign of the attitude to progressive conception of human history and relationship. As research and conference center the RSC explores the Roosevelt legacy, offering an inspiring way to understand the history and culture of the United States and its meaning for Europe. The staff realizes this objective through their research programs, by sharing the results through academic and public channels, and by stimulating further inquiry through lectures and conferences, and a strong international academic network further advance this mission.

The RSC is located in the twelfth-century Abbey of Middelburg, the Netherlands. It is named after three famous Americans whose ancestors emigrated in the seventeenth century from Zeeland to New York: President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962).

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In some way, it is possible to say that the fruit of the four freedoms carried out by the new deal gave to American and European citizens the awareness that generated the movements of emancipation that in the middle-60s became position against the war that was running in Vietnam. The main stars of the new rock and psychedelic music, took the scene and the main powers, with J.F. Kennedy as President of the United States, Giovanni XXIII as modernist pope and M.L. King as prophet of the people’s universal right, where receptive as never before. The Beat movement seemed to be unrestrainable. But in 1968, with the murderers of JFK and MLK, dreams were suddenly and sadly broken.

After these crimes happened, propaganda worked to generated oblivion into the collective consciousness, manipulating information and transforming the rising social intellect into a passive mass, under the de-constructive influence of the media system. Those crimes were never solved, with inquiries and process often ridiculous. Capitalism’s intelligence understood that to have control over the people, the first thing to do was to put under control music and popular culture.

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They bought all main important copyrights, getting control of the press; changing the meaning of symbolic words like “democracy”, “freedom”, “anarchy”, “ideology”, “enlightenment” in the same opposite way that is the way to work of the neo-language described by Orwell and made effective by the obscurantist restoration which came outside in 1975 with the Trilateral commission’s document “The Crisis of Democracy“, a programmatic manifesto that has drawn a sharp and pervasive propaganda and that is the origin of the crisis that this obscurantist and aristocrat political design uses to transfer wealth from the middle class to a small circle of wealthy who are destroying our rights and that it is necessary fight with the power of ideas and actions for a more just Europe and America, that have to be lands of civilization and material and spiritual progress.

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THE WORDS THEY STOLEN US

Democracy, instead to be a value, according to this document became an excess producing ungovernability. The document plays, with all the superbia of neo-aristocratic analysis, with some reasons that were suggested as evidences, such as the overload of the decision-making system, the bureaucratic weight of local, national and EU administration that are indicated as causes of the misleading government of Western countries.

Knowing that people are always unsatisfied with government, they applied a policy similar to what happens in famous Ubu Roi drama where, at the beginning of the play, a great number of people are crying and moaning. When the king enters, asking to his butler why they do so, the answer is: “they are free, therefore they claim for chains”. Of course, people were not free, but they were at that time in a condition that allowed them to be in a safe position to fight for more rights and more emancipation. Exactly what the Trilateral commission was trying to put under control. Passing from causes’ analysis to effects, the document describes people as they were in a situation of civic irresponsibility, in a system of “anomic democracy” producing “consensus without purposes”.

Finally, this pseudo-scientific approach goes straight to its target describing the process of disaggregation of interests and de-legitimation of authorities and public governments, accusing their inefficiencies as reasons to push for privatization.

Freedom: propaganda used this term with different values. At first, with a radical attack, freedom has been described so deforming, making of this an intolerable name, a synonym for anarchy, identifying in this the main cause of the degeneration of young hippies, bearers of “civic irresponsibility”. In a second phase, the establishment (what we define above “the military-industrial complex”) completed its revenge during the 80’s.

Manipulating star-system and creating simulacra of protest deprived of real contents, propaganda generated then the shift of the word “freedom” towards the “right to buy what you want”, creating the mass ideology which legitimated neo-liberalism‘ policies directed to increase consume through private debt and gaining more social control.

Why saving is wealth that frees; consumption produces debt that is a prison.

Anarchy: this term was made to become the scapegoat of all evil, the charge for each recursive protest action. With no regard for the historical roots of the word, linked to efforts to the need to stop and subvert oppressive regimes, and maintaining the complete ignorance of the philosophical side of the deadline for superimposition of meanings postmodern de-qualifying or, at least, due to subcultures ghetto.

In its meaning noble, anarchy means “absence of external control” and connects to a concept in which each person is superiorem non recognoscens, which means that personal responsibility allows each individual to not have to tolerate that someone else can decide on him.

Instrumentally using the historical dependence of the term by the struggle against the oppressors of the Risorgimento uprisings, this word was painted as something exclusively for people exalted and armed with weapons, becoming the accusation perfect for transferring responsibility for attacks and disruptive actions carried out during the peaceful demonstrations of protests of the ’60s and’ 70s.

This way of reacting of ‘establishment is nothing more than an application of the strategy of tension achieved by infiltration of groups paid by the secret services (so-called intelligence) to bring the protests under the defeat of terror. To be clear, the practice is not new, being the same old story since the days of Sacco and Vanzetti, a model that was answered hundreds of times since the French Revolution (in which, as many historians acknowledge, the “terror” was part of the aristocratic revenge and strategy of the Restoration).

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In today’s world this role is played, internally, by far-right movements, which are the main driving force for the violent actions and manifestations of brutal force as the black bloc. At the international level, this role is played by the simulacrum of the pseudo-Islam, a creature of the secret service, built to represent the scarecrow of an enemy, as it appears according a document recently released by USA’s National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, where there is evidence that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, the soi-disant Islamic State, is not but an intelligence asset), used to justify acts of war that the Western elites use to control the oil wells.

Ideology is, since its origin, a term that I do not like too much, being nothing more than a simplified and trivialized the power of reason, which is the power, for each individual, to understand what is best for him ( her). The understanding that the masses had to be educated, informed, produced during the nineteenth century, the new idea that each individual is required to choose the political side. According to some thinkers, this was from the beginning a reduction intolerable. In particular, the choice between a right to military and magical defense of capitalism as opposed to a materialist Marxist socialism, has already established itself in the defeat of Reason. Just the cosmopolitan Mazzini, the era in which it was taking shape, he realized that materialism was in danger of becoming a serious limit to the emancipation of the Peoples. In his article of 1835 Faith and Future, wrote: “The great thoughts create the great Peoples. May our lives be the summary of one great thought organic. Extend the horizon of Peoples. Liberate their conscience by materialism that oppresses them.”

Man of great passions, Mazzini had great disappointments. Among these undoubtedly the fact that the spirit of the times gave spiritualism magic to the right and the military emancipation Marxist materialism. From this tragedy of thought comes the modern hypothesized (and false) incompatibility between irrational thought and spiritual with the progressive idea.

From these origins has produced the psychological miserable scene of the twentieth century, solved the false image of capitalism thwarted by communism, which was the logical vacuum filled by ideologies to the end of the Cold War.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, ideology was painted by the hegemonic powers as something of the past, an archaic way to think, outdated and anachronistic. In its place was built the half-idea of postmodernism, a logic in which it is impossible to understand what are the causes of what is happening (with the famous phrase of Lorenz that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can generate, through intermediate phenomena, a hurricane in another part of the planet).

In this way, the establishment has led us to resign, stop thinking about ourselves as people fighting for their rights, but only as consumers struggling to have a handful of extra money to buy a car and expensive dress, and willing to do anything for this.

Enlightenment

Word on which he built a formidable deception of neo-language that changes meaning into its opposite, the term enlightenment from political and social action to bring to all the light of reason was transformed something reserved for the exclusive privilege of some of the predestined in command of the world.

The promise fantastic that the lighting would become something open to all, each person can participate at a level of self-consciousness suitable way to get in touch with the interior, intimate higher self. Here is the revolutionary idea: that every human being, if you set the right conditions, will be able to access and understand the spiritual journey of life.

From this conception emerged the opening movement of the secret doctrines of initiation to a growing number of people (the rituals of secret societies, once reserved exclusively to the aristocracy, began to be published and knowable to all): all these promises were denied , regenerating the medieval model, obscurantist, closed, sealed.

The word “Enlightenment”, the original meaning of philosophy is the power for each individual to be guided by reason to the understanding of natural law (something extremely close to the name of the Buddha, the “awakened” for real life), was transformed into a word that indicates the limited number of elites who have received the right to rule over all humanity.

In modern terms, the awakening of enlightenment invoked by the beat literature has been removed from the system of mass media, making replacement with pop, a new definition of the meaning of which is devoid of any sense of protest and only applies to the identification of a subculture, which acknowledges and agrees to be placed under the level of the hegemonic “superior culture” (to be preserved, without contamination popular, reserved in the temples of symphony orchestras) and filling this “subculture of guys” with waste and “idols plastic” exalted by the media, whose propaganda suggests idolatry, generating new models of trend opposed to folk, psychedelia and progressive, claiming the 70’s and 80’s, disco and electronic videomusic, fruits reactionary wind that pushed street youth from the streets and from public spaces in cities, closing them in those stupid temples called nightclubs.

THIS IS HOW THE MASS-MEDIA DISMANTLED THE PROTEST

This process does not at all spontaneous evolution of the style, but it’s brought something that was programmed to obtain what is called “soft control”, by manipulating the press and then the public in order to remove the student protest and every movement of consciousness; removing the heritage of the New Deal. Finally, to dismantle the economic system of public investment; to dismantle the welfare state.

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The Protest was destroyed both at the symbolic and at the concrete level. On the first side, beat literature was downgraded as a youngster subculture; the same was given for psychedelic music, who dared to attempt the symphonic level: criticists ridiculed the better bands of progressive rock and put them on the same level of the rising punk, made by guys who often were not even able playing two times the same riff. It doesn’t matter if some of them survived with their art: they were anyway forced to change, to adapt or to stay just an authoritative but isolated voice, no matter how much celebrated. The mainstream scene passed from the music engagé – with that politic committment which was stating the times they are a changin’– towards a just glamour style. Electronic music, discotheques, fashion, movida’s sex and illegal drugs where the perfect system to take away young people far from fight for rights and politics contents. And this was the end of the post-war dream. So the mass-media changed all the meaningful words of the protest into new no-meanings inflated and corrupted by propaganda.

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Finally, beat culture was substituted by the pop, a new definition whose meaning is deprived from any meaning of protest and goes just to the identification of a subculture, posed under the hegemonic level of “higher culture” (to be preserved, free from popular contamination, in the reserved temples of symphonic orchestras) and filling this “youngster’s subculture” with rubbish and “plastic’s idols”, exalted by the media, whose propaganda suggests to idolize them, generating new trend patterns opposite to folk, psychedelic and progressive, with a contrasting style-system carried out by ’70s discomusic and ’80 electronic videomusic, the fruit of a reactionary wind that pushed away young people from squares and public spaces into the cities, closing them into that stupid temples called discotheques.

Looking from the economic perspective, the propaganda system then persuaded public opinion that the Keynesian model was wrong, producing deficit and inflationary pressures. Through this way the so-called “escalator prices-wages” was eliminated, as the first step of the dismantling process of the workers and citizens’ rights system, so laboriously and painfully edified during the XX century.

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It is not to forget that in between social sciences, economy doesn’t exist in itself, but it starts as Political economy: this was the original term used for studying production and trade, and their relations with law, custom, and government with the distribution of national income and wealth. The meaning of this statement is that economic is not a science as physic, but always it holds inside a political element, which is given by the choice made by someone who got the power to do it. Therefore, economic is the science of who governs.

If we look at what happened in the last 30 years from an economic standpoint, we realize the effort that the system of propaganda has done to convince the public that the Keynesian model is wrong, because it produces deficits and inflationary pressures. Through these statements, the so-called “sliding scale price-wage” has been eliminated, inaugurating the first step of the process of dismantling of workers’ rights and welfare of the citizens, so laboriously and painfully built over the course of the twentieth century by those who believed as we still believe that the only thing that really counts in this transitory experience that is life on earth, is certainly not rich, but something else, which contains in itself the right energy for the sustenance of a full life and worthy living.

Access the Spiritual Life

Years ago the information was secret and accessible only to a few. Today, in the time of internet, things have really changed; However, the military-industrial complex continues to work to control the important information, and it does so in several ways. The first level is to make the good information indistinguishable from propaganda. In our time, free thinkers manifest themselves as bloggers and find common ground in Wikipedia to obtain information not included in the mainstream media or treated in any other way. For example, in the current economic panorama of “hysteria debt” and the “rigor of public accounts” are told by the media so manipulative and fraudulent, in the interest of personal careers generated by subservient to private oligarchic rulers.

To restart the process of defending the rights of citizens, according to the Movement Roosevelt, the first step is to regenerate and promote popular sovereignty in substance and not just formal, reaffirming at all levels of public institutions – local, regional, national and supranational – the great ideals and concrete actions suggested by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN has approved on 10 December 1948, the starting point for the defeat of each thesis neoaristocratic and / or neo-liberal, and those who support a process of antidemocratic globalization.

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To restart the process of defending citizen’s rights, according to Movimento Roosevelt, the first step is to regenerate and promote popular sovereignty in a substantive and not merely formal way, at all levels of public institutions – local, regional, national, and supranational – re-affirming the great ideal and concrete action suggested by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN approved December 10, 1948, the starting point for the defeat of each neoliberal neoaristocratic and undemocratic process of globalization.

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Globalization of Rights and Cosmopolitan Citizenship

Globalization must be a process of enlargement of the rights of all human beings, a transnational and cosmopolitan orientation. Each of us needs to feel part of this process of spiritual evolution of humanity, everyone must produce actions and activities to achieve this, the only one that counts in our transient presence on this planet, on this remote sphere of the spiritual life.

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SOCIETAS MAZZINI is part of the process started by MOVIMENTO ROOSEVELT and intends to contribute to light outbreaks of thought throughout Italy and throughout Europe, wherever it is possible to feed a thought of freedom and emancipation from oppression. These words are addressed to Sisters and Brothers, from anywhere in the world, want to be partakers of this ideal path and universal with concrete actions, built personally.